Offense may have taken the heat after South Carolina’s loss to Mississippi State, but the Gamecocks’ defense wasn’t blameless.
COLUMBIA - Peyton Williams didn’t spend much time dressing it up after the game, and honestly, what would have been the point?
South Carolina’s defense got beat too often in a loss to Mississippi State, giving up 41 points and too many busted coverages to count cleanly. For a unit that usually plays with some backbone, it was a rough night - one that left the Gamecocks chasing answers as much as they were chasing Kamario Taylor.
“We just have to go out there and execute. We just have to respond,” Williams said in the immediate aftermath. “Everybody going out there and doing their job.”
That has to be the baseline now, because the next challenge is even bigger: Alabama, an offense that has found its running game and has gotten comfortable playing from behind.
Against Mississippi State, the breakdowns piled up. Marquis Johnson got loose behind Fred “JayR” Johnson on third-and-18, with Johnson standing still and watching the quarterback before the ball was flipped to Johnson in the corner of the end zone while both Johnson and Williams looked on in confusion. The question practically answered itself: were they supposed to be covering that guy?
“Just miscommunication, not being on the same page, and them taking advantage of our mistakes,” Johnson said.
Then there was corner Damarcus Leach, still working his way into a bigger role, getting spun around as Taylor beat him for another touchdown. Johnson also found himself watching a play develop to the right before Taylor threw back to the left for a wide-open gain on third-and-12.
Defensive coordinator and coach Shane White had to sort through the film quickly, because there’s never much time to sit on a bad one.
Even with this being so out of character for his defense, White took the same approach this week.
“We’re in the business of not making excuses, really learn from what we didn’t do well and grow from it,” he said. “Staying cohesive is the most important thing for us right now, as a defense and a football team.”
White made a distinction between the kinds of mistakes that happen in football and the kinds that wear on a coach. Coverage busts happen, he said, though not nearly as often as South Carolina would like. Those are teachable moments, the sort of thing that can be fixed by “coaching the heck out of it” so players understand technique, speed, when to turn their heads, and how to use their arms.
What really bothers him are the downs where the defense should be getting off the field and doesn’t - when third-and-2 turns into a 12-yard completion. That’s the kind of thing South Carolina has already worked on too many times.
Still, White said the group’s response has been encouraging. Sunday brought some heavy shoulders, but not a single player tried to run from it.
“Some things that weren’t to our standard in regards to communication. Just got to continue pushing that button,” White said. “A lot of us are owning up to our mistakes, even coaches ourselves.”
He also held back during the game when Dylan Stewart and Anthony Addison were being held repeatedly, including one especially obvious grab on Addison. White didn’t say much in the moment, even when Judge Collier was flagged for hands to the face on a play that wiped out a strip-sack of Taylor and would have put Mississippi State at the 9-yard line with 30 seconds left in the half. White called that one “tick-tack,” and Addison had been tackled by his blocker on the play.
What should have been an offsetting penalty wasn’t.
White did give his defense credit for playing hard and physically, then turned back to the details that need cleaning up, especially angles and not getting caught flat-footed.
“We over-ran the ball sometimes,” he said. “If you’re not improving and learning from your mistakes, if you’re dwelling on things and trying to figure out what happened, if you continue to grow and get better I think that’s where you can kind of close that ground.”
Alabama won’t look like Mississippi State personnel-wise, but it brings plenty of talent. And maybe the better answer for South Carolina is facing something more straightforward - a “traditional” offense instead of all the motion, fakes and speed Mississippi State used to keep the Gamecocks guessing.
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